ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Joseph of Nazareth, Guardian of Our Lord, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patron Saint of Canada, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, who from the family of thy servant David didst raise up Joseph the carpenter to be protector of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Grant that we may so labour in our earthly vocations, that they may become labours of love and service offered unto thee, our Father; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The collect for today, the commemoration of Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath and Wells, Non-Juror, Hymn Writer (source):

O God, from whom all blessings flow, by whose providence we are kept and by whose grace we are directed: assist us, through the example of thy servant Thomas Ken, faithfully to keep thy word, humbly to accept adversity and steadfastly to worship thee; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

“The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light”

Matthew recalls Isaiah’s prophecy about the light that has arisen upon “them which sat in the region and shadow of death.” He does so in the context of Christ’s coming to Capernaum which is on the sea-coast of Galilee in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali. Christ’s coming there occasions the connection in his mind with Isaiah’s prophecy about those same sea-coast lands. Matthew is suggesting the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Christ Jesus, the Jesus whose mission of repentance, discipleship, healing and salvation are the very things that belong to the evangelium – the good news that is the meaning of the word, gospel.

The lesson from the Acts of the Apostles echoes that same theme. “The word of God grew and multiplied,” we are told, and we hear of the spreading of that word into Seleucia and Cyprus through Barnabas and Saul; all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. With the commemoration of St. Patrick, we are taken in an opposite direction, “away in the lovable west,” as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, to the shores of Ireland but with that same spirit of mission. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland; the one who brought the good news of the Gospel to those sea-coast islands on the far, far reaches of Europe, the very outposts of civilization and order in the fifth century.

The remarkable spread of Christianity is one of the great mysteries of the world; an undeniable fact that bespeaks a remarkable revolution from pagan darkness to the light of Christ. With the coming of Christ, light and hope triumph over the dismal darkness and despairing fatalisms of the pagan cultures, whether sophisticated and urban or rustic and rural, whether ancient or modern. Patrick lit the paschal fire, the fire of Easter triumph of Christ’s resurrection, on the hill of Tara. It signaled the conversion of the Irish.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Patrick (c. 390-c. 461), Bishop, Missionary, Patron of Ireland (source):

Almighty God, who in thy providence chose thy servant Patrick to be the apostle of the people of Ireland: keep alive in us the fire of faith which he kindled, and in this our earthly pilgrimage strengthen us to gain the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

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“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”

The story of the Temptations of Christ is read on the First Sunday in Lent. In response to the second temptation, Christ responds with these words: “thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” But, of course, in relation to the idea and the reality of the doctrine of original sin, that is exactly and constantly what we do. We tempt God. We constantly put God to the test, trying to make him accountable and measurable to us. Our task this Lent is to ponder the mystery of our sinfulness, the mystery of original sin.

Original Sin: What is it and why does it matter?

Have you ever wondered, what’s wrong with the world? Have you ever wondered, what’s wrong with me? In other words, have you ever had that sense that nothing is the way it should be either with ourselves or others or our world and day? Has that sense of things not being right ever resulted in asking about evil? Unde hoc malum? Where does evil come from? Or do we persist in saying and thinking that everything is good; just a few bad apples in the pile that spoil everything?

Original sin is the doctrine that there is something radically and inescapably not right about any of us right from the get-go of our being. Very tough stuff. And yet, it seems, this is actually part and parcel of the good news. Original Sin catapults us into the totality of God’s grace and grants utter primacy to God’s will. Our task is to try to understand something about this strange and curious teaching that seems to cause so much consternation. Yet, as G.K. Chesterton observes, it is the most empirical of all Christian teachings, the most provable from experience.

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The Anglican theologian and scholar E.B. Pusey wrote this prayer for Lent:

God, give us grace, this coming Lent, so to lay to heart our ways, that we may weary of all which is not His, from Him, to Him: and may, through Him, the Living Way, by new love and obedience, attain to Him, Who, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, is the End of our being, the Fulness of bliss of all creation, “the Eternal Infinite Truth, the origin, fountain, measure, end, and cause of all created truth,” the ever-blessed, beatific Life; to which He, of His mercy, bring us sinners, to Whom be all glory and thanksgiving and adoration and praise, for ever and ever. Amen.

Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) was one of the most prominent figures in the Church of England during the 19th century. At the age of 28, he was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, positions he held for the rest of his life. Together with John Keble and John Henry Newman (later Cardinal Newman), he was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement.

Pusey co-founded the first Anglican sisterhood in 1845, helping to revive monastic life in the Church of England. The practice of confession in the Anglican Church stems from his 1846 sermon “The Entire Absolution of the Penitent“. Later in his life, he fought the growing influence of liberalism in the church and successfully opposed proposals to truncate or omit the Athanasian Creed.

He was known as a wise, humble, and compassionate man, who built a parish church in Leeds at his own expense and served the sick during the 1866 cholera epidemic in London.

Two years after his death, friends and admirers established in his honour Pusey House, an Anglo-Catholic house of worship, prayer, and learning. His personal library formed the basis of Pusey House Library, now one of the leading theological libraries at Oxford.

“Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven”

The land is the place of worship. Abram comes into the land which God has given him and builds there “an altar to the Lord.” Jesus comes to his own city. And there is healing and forgiveness. The land is the place of forgiveness and new life.

This morning’s first lesson is part of a whole theology of the land that unfolds in the witness of the Scriptures. That theology of the land begins first with the story of Creation and the Fall. Creation is the paradise in which God has planted us but has become the wilderness of our disobedience in which we have to learn the truth of God and his will through suffering and work, through the forms of our wilfulness made visible to us, and through the forms of divine love revealed to us.

In way, the Book of Genesis is the story of brothers and of brothers that are often at odds with one another and often about land. There is the story of Cain and Abel, the story of the first murder and one in which “your brother’s blood,” God says to Cain, “is crying to me from the ground,” from the land. It marks the beginning of the blood-soaked ground of our world and day, a world of wars and destruction. There are the stories of Abram and Lot, such as we have this morning in the separating out of who is going to have what land and where. Just as importantly, that story unveils part of the divine covenant for our humanity transacted by God to Abram – the idea of a promised land. What exactly is that promised land remains a much vexed problem politically. But, perhaps, that is to miss the point theologically. Abram builds an altar to the Lord under the oaks of Mamre. It will be the scene for God’s promise to Abram and Sarah of a Son through whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, though not without a most grievous and difficult trial of Abram’s faith. Ultimately, the land is the good land where God is acknowledged, where God is honoured and worshipped. “There he built an altar to the Lord.”

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“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil”

Everything in this gospel must disquiet us. There is, first, the idea of Jesus being led “by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil”; secondly, there is the idea of the wilderness itself, an image which disturbs as much as it attracts.

Wilderness here is the place of temptation but under the guiding force of the Holy Spirit. This implies a kind of necessity about the wilderness in the understanding of the Christian pilgrimage. Somehow there is something good about temptation.

Wilderness. It is an intriguing term. What do we understand by the wilderness? It is an ambiguous concept for ancients and for moderns.

The wilderness can be a place of fearfulness and uncertainty, the wilderness of chaos as in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. Alternatively, we might think of the wilderness as a place of pure nature, unsullied by human activity, a notion, perhaps, best captured in the twentieth century phenomenon of national parks, and now, the idea of wilderness sanctuaries where human intervention is held to a minimum. There is as well the idea of the wilderness as a place of sanctuary and escape; wilderness as a kind of paradise away from the greater wildness of the urban jungle.